Former Russian Premier Falls Ill; Poisoning Seen as Possible Cause

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: November 30, 2006

Yegor T. Gaidar, a former prime minister and architect of Russia's early post-Soviet market reforms, has been hospitalized with a mysterious illness that his daughter and associates said Wednesday could have resulted from poisoning.

Mr. Gaidar, 50, fell ill in Ireland on Friday, the day after Alexander V. Litvinenko, the former Russian secret agent, died in London following an illness caused by exposure to polonium 210, a radioactive isotope. Mr. Gaidar's spokesman, Valery A. Natarov, said Mr. Gaidar returned to Moscow on Sunday and remained in a hospital, though neither Mr. Natarov nor others would identify it.

Mr. Natarov said that Mr. Gaidar's condition had improved, but that doctors had not diagnosed his illness. ''We still have no official information from the doctors,'' he said.

Because Mr. Gaidar's illness occurred in the wake of the Litvinenko case, which had led to accusations of a Russian role, others quickly linked the cases, but without evidence.

Anatoly B. Chubais, an ally of Mr. Gaidar and chairman of Russia's electric monopoly, said that Mr. Gaidar appeared to have escaped an attempt on his life. He said the case was linked to Mr. Litvinenko's death and to the recent killing of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

''This miraculously incomplete lethal construct -- Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Gaidar -- would have been extremely attractive to those seeking an unconstitutional and forceful change of power in Russia,'' Mr. Chubais said in televised remarks from St. Petersburg. He did not elaborate, but his words suggested he did not believe that the Russian authorities had been involved.

Still, the reaction to Mr. Gaidar's illness underscored the sensation the London poisoning has caused, though the police in Britain have not classified Mr. Litvinenko's death as a murder case, and the Kremlin has denied Russian officials were involved.

A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, on Wednesday criticized what he called the ''completely unexplainable hysteria'' over the cases.

Mr. Gaidar, who served in government under President Boris N. Yeltsin after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, has remained active in politics as a leader in Mr. Chubais's party, the Union of Right Forces, and as the director of the Institute for the Economy in Transition. He has criticized Kremlin policies. He fell ill at a conference at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where he vomited and lost consciousness. His daughter Maria, a political advocate, said he was ''much better'' when she visited him on Wednesday.

She said his symptoms were a mystery, but doctors would make an official diagnosis by Friday. ''I am absolutely sure it was not done by the Russian government,'' she said.